


Quis custodier ipsos custodies qui custodies custodiet?

by ScribeofArda



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: And sometimes they aren't okay, Angst, Anxiety, Depression, Established Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gaby looks after her boys, Hurt/Comfort, Look this is just a bundle of tropes all smushed together, M/M, Napoleon and Illya being cute and loving together, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, They look after her, You shouldn't expect any less at this point, being a spy is hard, but they will be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-14 14:42:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14138193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScribeofArda/pseuds/ScribeofArda
Summary: Who watches the watcher who watches the watchman?The movies always make it more glamorous than it really is. The cameras never quite capture what a gunshot wound really looks like, the face that someone makes as they die on film never hollow enough. But there is more left in their wakes than bloody hands and the ache of old injuries when it rains, more that they drag with them every day in the job. Sometimes, it's too much. Sometimes, the worst enemies they have aren't their usual megalomaniacs trying to destroy the world, but the things they carry with them in their own heads.But when one of them goes down, the others are always there to pick them up on the other side.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have a persistent cold and am drinking more honey and lemon tea than I think I ever have in my entire life, but here's another story anyway. This is a shorter one, a slice of their lives in UNCLE (much like [since hunger taught us wit](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13278090/chapters/30382887)) and will probably fall out to be about five chapters long.
> 
> This focuses very much on the days when the three of them really aren't okay. I tried to not fall into the very obvious traps for each character- for example, this story doesn't deal with Illya's anger and episodes. It's hard to explain here, but hopefully once you read it you'll understand.
> 
> Nothing gets too graphic or detailed in this story, but please look after yourself and be careful. This chapter in particular does mention suicide, though nothing happens or is seriously considered.

Gaby doesn’t bother knocking as she unlocks the door and slips inside. The apartment is familiar, the chess set halfway through a game on the coffee table with two empty glasses of wine beside it. She sets her bag down on the couch and glances in the kitchen, but there’s nobody there, only a forgotten mug of what looks like coffee on the counter. “Napoleon?” she calls out.

“In here,” comes the reply, and she heads for the bedroom. The door is pulled to, and when she carefully pushes it open it takes a moment for her eyes to adjust. The rest of the apartment is just as she usually knows it, large windows that made Napoleon buy the apartment in the first place, the scatter of Napoleon’s and Illya’s lives all over the place. There are a set of Russian novels on one of the bookshelves, a painting that she is fairly sure is stolen above the mantelpiece. But as soon as she pushes open the bedroom door, there’s a frown on her face.

The room is dim, the curtains drawn so that only a sliver of light is finding its way into the room. Napoleon is sat on the bed, a book in his hands that she’s not even sure he can see well enough to read, and Gaby can just see the top of Illya’s head where he’s curled up next to Napoleon, huddled under the duvet.

“Gaby, darling, nice to see you,” Napoleon murmurs. There’s a smile on his face, but it’s weary as he sets down his book. He reaches for Illya, smoothing a hand through his hair. “Peril, Gaby’s just gotten here. I’m going to have a chat with her outside. I’ll just be in the kitchen, we’ll only be a few minutes, okay?” His voice is unspeakably tender, and he presses a kiss to Illya’s forehead as he gets off the bed. “Okay, Peril?”

There’s a murmur from Illya that Gaby can’t make out, and Napoleon nods. “Of course,” he replies quietly. “I’ll make you some toast as well.”

He sighs when Illya doesn’t say anything, and heads for Gaby. “Thanks for coming,” he murmurs as he pulls the door to. “Come on, I need coffee. Or scotch.”

“How’s he doing?” Gaby asks as she follows him into the kitchen. Napoleon slumps at the table and she heads for the cupboard where she knows the good coffee is kept, pulling out the coffee press. “He’d seem subdued on Friday, but I didn’t realise it had gotten that bad over the weekend.”

“Christ, it’s Monday already,” Napoleon mutters. “Did Waverly complain about us not being at work?”

“No, he seemed to take it with his usual British ambivalence,” Gaby replies with a wry smile. “He’s given you both a couple of days, I think, but I guess this is something we’ll have to…what’s the stupid phrase you Americans use?”

“Play by ear, I think,” Napoleon says, a ghost of a smile flitting across his face. It fades away quickly enough, though, and he sighs. “It’s not the worst he’s been, but it’s not great,” he tells Gaby. “We’ll get through it like we always do, though.”

“Of course you will,” Gaby says, and she makes her voice sound more confident than she feels. She busies her hands with making the coffee for a few seconds. “Any idea what triggered it?”

When she looks over at Napoleon, he just shrugs. “These things don’t always have a specific trigger,” he says. “Maybe the back to back missions we’ve had recently? We’ve had less time to decompress than usual, these past months, and it could have built up for him. But I don’t know.” He sighs, running his hand through his hair. He looks far less put together than he does on a normal day, hair curling and tangled, and stubble across his jaw. Gaby supposes that at least he’s wearing slacks and a shirt, and not in pyjamas, but the only time she’s ever seen him in pyjamas during the day is when he’s been injured, so that doesn’t mean much.

“I don’t know, Gaby,” Napoleon murmurs eventually. “The lives we live, what we do…it can hit all at once, sometimes, and it is different every time. To be honest, I’m sort of glad I’m not dodging my ashtray.”

Gaby arches a brow, and pours a mug of coffee for Napoleon. She sits down opposite him with her own mug. “Is he just…”

“Staying in bed?” Napoleon asks wryly. He takes a sip of his coffee. “Pretty much. We went out at the weekend a bit, wandered around the city, and I took him to a jazz evening on Saturday, but I don’t know if that helped or made it worse in the end. He got worse yesterday evening, and has just been sleeping, mostly, since then.” He sighs, and glances around Gaby to check the bedroom door. “I never quite know what to do, when this happens.”

“Your problem is that you care too much,” Gaby says. Napoleon chokes on his coffee, and Gaby arches a brow. “I’m not wrong,” she points out. “You love Illya, so you worry about him, and you want to do absolutely everything right. Which makes you worry even more. You should just do what you can and hope it’s enough.”

Napoleon stares at her for a long moment, and then slowly lets his head fall to the table. “Why are you always right?” he groans, his voice muffled.

Gaby reaches over and pats his shoulder. “Because I don’t have my head stuck in the sand half of the time,” she says wryly. “Also, I’m not an emotionally repressed idiot like the both of you are. That helps.” She takes a sip of her coffee and nabs a grape from the bowl on the table. “So, what can I do?”

Napoleon looks up at her. “Could you…I need to go out and buy groceries at some point, run a couple of errands, but I...” He trails off, looks helplessly at her, and Gaby waits for him to find the words.

“I’ve hidden the guns,” Napoleon says eventually, like the words are being pulled out of his lips without him having any say in it. “And Illya’s frankly ridiculous collection of knives. I don’t know if I’ve gotten them all, he can get quite inventive with where he stashes them, but I’ve got most. They’re in the safe behind the Renoir, which I changed the combination to.” He stares at the table for a long moment. “I don’t know…I don’t _think_ he’d ever, not even with how he’s feeling right now, but I don’t know.”

Gaby purses her lips, and lets herself take a few seconds to think that through. “I think if you let yourself linger over that, you’re going to make yourself sick with worry,” she says eventually. “Have some trust in him, and everything else should follow.” Napoleon just nods, and Gaby glances behind her at the closed bedroom door. “What else can I do?”

Napoleon shrugs. “If you can get him to eat something, I will give you a bottle of vodka,” he says. “I can’t…I don’t think he takes well to authority, at the moment. Believe me, I’ve tried ordering him to get out of bed, to see if that soldier in him will respond automatically, but it just makes him pissed off at me.” He shakes his head. “I’ve tried most things I can think of. He just lies there.”

“Have you asked Illya what he wants?” Gaby asks. “We’re talking about him like he has no agency in this. He’s still here, Napoleon.”

“When you use my first name, I know I’m in for it,” Napoleon says wryly. “And you don’t think I hate this? I hate talking about him like this, but this is…I don’t know, a combination of shell shock deciding to rear its head again and all the other terrible things the world has carved into him over the years. He’s stuck inside his own head, Gaby, and hell if I know how to get him out of there.”

Gaby studies him for a long moment. “Get out of here for a few minutes,” she says eventually. “Go run your errands, get a breath of fresh air, even if it is bloody freezing outside. I’ll sit with him until you get back.” She sips at her coffee again. “Go on, get going. Stick a jumper on first, but get out of here for a few minutes.”

Napoleon gets reluctantly to his feet and Gaby shoos him out of the apartment, pressing a kiss to his cheek as he leaves. Only when the door has shut behind him does she head back to the kitchen, grab a banana from the fruit bowl on the table, and head into the bedroom.

Illya hasn’t moved from where he was on the bed. “I’m going to turn on the light,” Gaby says clearly, and Illya shifts just enough to pull the duvet further up over his head. She flicks the light switch and walks over to sit on the edge of the bed. Illya is barely visible, but she doesn’t try and pull away the duvet.

“You know, if we were going to have a competition at UNCLE for the shittiest backstory,” she says eventually. “You would win, hands down. No contest, I think. Nobody would even enter.” She peels the banana and takes a bite. “I mean, it might be a bit biased, seeing as you’re the only Russian and all the Americans are torn between hating you and thinking their life is so much better, but Waverly could judge it. He’s British, so he has no emotions to make him biased.”

Illya rolls over, and glares at her. “Do you have point,” he rasps, and Gaby rolls her eyes.

“He speaks,” she declares. “And no, not really. I just wanted to see if Napoleon was right.”

Something complicated crosses Illya’s face at Napoleon’s name. “He’s gone out to get groceries,” Gaby tells him. “He’ll be back in a few minutes. Oh, and he promised me vodka if I got you to eat something, so if you eat a banana I’ll split the bottle with you.”

Illya rolls back over, turning his back on her, and Gaby shrugs. “It was worth a chance,” she says, taking another bite of the banana. “You have Napoleon worried, by the way,” she says through a mouthful of banana. “He won’t say it, but you can see it on his face.”

Illya mumbles something under his breath, and Gaby frowns. “Okay, you can have one self-pitying comment about yourself,” she says, “and then I will hit you every time after that.” Illya is still, and she pokes at him. “Go on, get it out the way. You’re obviously thinking it.”

Illya rolls back over so that he can see her, and he looks miserable enough that Gaby’s expression softens. “I said, he should cut his losses,” Illya spits at her. His defiance only holds for a few seconds, and then his lips twist and he rolls back away from her so she can’t see the dampness of his eyes.

“Oh darling,” Gaby says. She reaches out and squeezes Illya’s shoulder, pretending that she can’t feel the trembling beneath her hand. “Napoleon is worried because he loves you, of course. And he’s worried about stepping wrong and making a mistake whilst trying to help you. I’ve watched the two of you be together for long enough now for me to believe that he’d just walk away from you because of this.” Illya doesn’t say anything, and Gaby hums. “If Napoleon were having one of those days where you have to hide his lockpicks, where he drives you mad with his complete inability to stay still, would you leave him?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Illya snaps. “Of course not.”

“Exactly,” Gaby says. “He won’t resent you for this, Illya. He just won’t. I don’t think he ever could, not the way he loves you.” She smooths her hand down his shoulder. “He’ll reassure you himself when he gets back, darling. Now, what do you want to do?”

Illya is silent for a long moment, and then rolls over to look at her. “What do you mean?” he asks.

“What do you want to do?” Gaby asks again. “Anything. Well, anything within reach. I’m not taking you down to a gun range or anything like that.”

“Napoleon has taken guns,” Illya says immediately. “Changed combination on safe. Most of knives as well.”

“And did you want him to?” Gaby asks. She knows Napoleon meant well, she knows that he was worried and only doing what he thought was the best thing to do. She’s only seen a fraction, so far, of what Napoleon has seen throughout his long and bloody past, and she can guess that it’s more than enough to make him hide the guns. But she also knows that maybe it wasn’t quite the right thing to do, to take away a form of Illya’s agency.

Illya stares at her. “I don’t know,” he gets out. Gaby arches a brow, and he shakes his head. “I…I don’t know. I wanted them gone but I want them here, and I want him to have them because I’m useless like this, I…” He trails off, switching into Russian and rolling away from her again. Gaby holds back a sigh and pulls herself up onto the bed so she can lean back against the headboard.

“You know, I used to get so angry,” she says. “Back in East Berlin. Most of the time I was fine, kept my head down and did my job because that was how you survived in there, but sometimes I would get so angry. At the world, at my father, at anything I could for where I was.” She looks over at one of the bookshelves in the room, what looks like a haphazard mixture of Napoleon’s novels and poetry and books on art, and the more eclectic scatter of Russian novels amongst them. Even now, the bitterness of those years is easy enough to find. East Berlin will always have its claws in her, even long after the wall eventually does come down.

“There’s another side to this,” she says eventually. “Just in case you need reminding. It might not feel like it right now, but in a couple of days you won’t feel like this, and you will feel better.” Illya just hums, and drags the duvet up a little higher, but she doesn’t miss the grateful look on his face, even if it’s fleeting.

She sits there for a while longer, flicking through the book that Napoleon had left behind. Illya is either dozing or pretending to, and she leaves him alone. There’s an exhaustion written clearly on his face, and she wishes that she could simply take it away, take all of this away, but she can’t.

There’s the sound of the door opening, and then she can hear Napoleon in the apartment, rustling as he unpacks groceries in the kitchen. Eventually the door creaks open, and he shoots her a grateful smile as he comes over to the side of the bed.

“I went to that bakery you like, Peril,” he says as he presses a kiss to Illya’s temple. “There are eclairs, if you want an éclair, and I can make the cheese potato things that you like.”

Illya rolls over, enough that he can see Napoleon. “Did you get éclair with caramel?” he asks, his voice little more than a rasp. Napoleon’s answering smile is beautiful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like it's slightly odd saying 'hope you enjoyed', because this story is a fairly introspective and angsty piece, but anyway, I hope you enjoyed this.
> 
> Hopefully I'll feel less like swallowing is a form of torture in a few days, but I'm on holiday right now, so the next chapter (the continuation of Illya's part of this story) will probably be up in a few days.
> 
> The title of this story comes from the Terry Pratchett book, Nightwatch. It is one of my absolute favourite books beyond anything Tolkien, please shout at me in the comments if you've read it!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to update this sooner, but, well, I forgot. I'm on Easter holidays right now and am home from uni, and the weather has been absolutely awful- it's been raining a lot, and when you work with horses it makes your life ten times more difficult. Anyway, new chapter. Enjoy.

Illya stays awake and alert just about long enough to eat an éclair before he curls back up in bed. Gaby can see the frustration evident on Napoleon’s face, but he says nothing about it, merely smoothing back Illya’s hair and pressing a kiss to Illya’s temple. “It’s okay, love,” he murmurs, running a thumb across Illya’s jaw. Even Gaby can see the annoyance and misery on Illya’s face, and Napoleon kisses him softly. “You can have these days. Sometimes it hits all at once and that’s okay, I’m still going to be here.” He presses another kiss to Illya’s lips. “I’m going to make something for dinner, okay?”

He motions at Gaby to follow him as he slips out the room. She presses a kiss of her own to Illya’s temple and pulls the door to behind her. “Want some help with cooking?” she asks.

“Gaby, darling, you are wonderful, but you are definitely not allowed to cook,” Napoleon says as he heads into the kitchen. “Now, how the hell do we get Illya out of bed to eat and have a shower?”

“Ask him?” Gaby says wryly. “He might surprise you.”

“We’ve been through this before, Gaby,” Napoleon says, a weariness seeping into his voice. “Shell shock is a nasty thing, and right now, it’s got Illya stuck inside his own head. From what he’s told me before, what I’ve managed to piece together, it’s damn close to being shown a reel of his worst hits playing through his head, and he doesn’t get much of a break. I’ll ask him, but I don’t know if he’ll even answer.” He opens up cupboards and starts pulling out ingredients, a slight viciousness to his movements that’s the only mark of his frustration. “I don’t know where his head is right now, only that it isn’t any place good.”

He starts chopping something up at the counter. Gaby sighs, gets up and goes to find a bottle of wine and some glasses. “By all means, help yourself,” Napoleon says over his shoulder, but he accepts a glass from her when she pours it.

Gaby swirls her wine in the glass, watching the legs run down the side. “How did he cope before?” she asks, the words barely half formed in her mind, let alone on her tongue.

Napoleon glances over at her. “What, Illya?” he asks. “What do you mean?”

“When he was in the KGB,” Gaby explains. “I know that he’s had…this, whatever it is, for a long time now. Do you know what he did when in the KGB, with this?”

Napoleon shrugs, scraping the chopped vegetables into a pan on the hob and adding some spices. “Same thing I did when in the CIA,” he replies. “Same thing most of us do, when on our own. Hold out until the missions are done, retreat back to a safe enough space and let everything fall apart for a day or two. Usually with a bottle of scotch, for me, but Illya probably favoured vodka if he drank anything at all.” He stirs at the stew. “And then you pick yourself up, wash off the blood as best you can, and go back to the job. It’s how I used to get by, it’s how Illya probably did before all of this.” He looks over at Gaby. “I’m willing to bet it’s how you got through East Berlin as well, even if you didn’t realise it.”

“Did his handlers know?” Gaby asks, rather than thinking too hard about the worst days in East Berlin. She almost flinches as Napoleon lets out a bark of laughter, it’s so discordant and flat.

“They didn’t give a shit,” he says, and she almost flinches again at the tone of his voice. Napoleon is turned away from her, standing over the hob, but she can see the set of his shoulders. He shakes his head. “The KGB, the CIA, they’re all the same when it comes to the handlers. As long as we’re getting the job done, they don’t care about how we’re doing.”

“They have a vested interest in keeping you alive,” Gaby points out. “After a certain time, they’ve invested enough money and time in you that you’re worth something to them, enough for them to want you to keep working for them. Isn’t that how most of these things work?”

“Oh, they looked after our bodies,” Napoleon says, a false brightness to his voice. “Best medical care we could want in the CIA, and the KGB was most likely the same, seeing as Illya is still running around not yet broken. And the CIA at least made us sit down and have quacks talk to us about our feelings, all that jazz, but pretty soon you work out what they want to hear from you, and you feed all their bullshit back to them so you can get out of there as soon as possible. But they didn’t care if they were breaking us slowly, as long as we were viable for the next few years. The KGB was worse than the CIA, in those regards.”

“Why?” Gaby asks, not quite sure she wants to hear the answer.

Napoleon sighs, and turns to look at her. “Because the KGB has the shortest life expectancy for their field agents,” he answers. “It’s as simple as that. Illya told me once that KGB agents last, on average, six or so years in the field. They die, or they’re injured badly enough that they can’t serve anymore, or they break under the weight of it all.” He shakes his head. “Russia has a history of using people at cannon fodder, if you look at half of their battles in the war. The handlers didn’t care what happened to our minds, as long as we could complete their missions.”

“Waverly is different,” Gaby feels compelled to say. “UNCLE is different. You must know that.”

Napoleon smiles slightly. It looks real, but Gaby can’t always tell when it comes to him. “Waverly is different,” he agrees. “UNCLE is the best sort of thing you get in this game, without trying to jinx it all. It just takes some getting used to, like we’re still waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

Gaby arches a brow. “What do shoes have to do with anything?”

“It’s an expression, darling,” Napoleon explains. “Waiting for what feels like the inevitable to happen, I suppose.” He turns the heat down at the hob and adds something else to the pan. “Waverly is in this for the right reasons, though. That’s more than I can say for any of the other handlers I’ve had.”

Gaby nods at that. Slowly the conversation shifts to more inane chat, the gossip of the day from UNCLE that Gaby brings, Napoleon adding in a couple of anecdotes here and there. She can see some of the tension easing from his shoulders as the stew simmers on the hob, as his wine glass slowly empties. There’s the rich smell of spices and meat in the steam swirling from the pot on the hob that will always make her hungry, the starkness of East Berlin too deeply ingrained in her even now, in New York and all its opulence.

“Right,” Napoleon says eventually, turning off the hob. “Let’s see if Illya will actually eat any of this.” He hangs up his apron and wipes his hands on a tea towel, before heading back to the bedroom. Gaby follows, lingering in the doorway.

Napoleon crouches down by the edge of the bed, smoothing Illya’s hair back from his forehead. “Hey, Peril,” he says, and his voice is suddenly tender, his smile a soft curve to his lips as he looks at Illya. “How about some food? I’ve made everything, all you’ve got to do is get up for me. Just for a little bit, okay, and then you can come back here.”

Illya murmurs something too low for Gaby to hear. Napoleon just nods, an enduring weariness flitting across his face ever so briefly. “I know, love,” he says. “I know. And I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but some food, a hot shower? It will help. You know it will.”

Illya blinks, and lets his head fall to rest in Napoleon’s hand. “I don’t know,” he just murmurs. “I don’t…” His voice is but a rasp, and Gaby doesn’t know if she wants to see the look on his face right now. “Napoleon,” he murmurs plaintively, the slightest of hitches to his voice.

Napoleon bows his head, resting his forehead against Illya’s. “Just eat something for me,” he says, almost too quiet for Gaby to hear. “Just a little something, some of the stew that you like. It will make you feel a little better.”

She takes a couple of steps forwards. “You’re always saying how incorrigible he is, Illya,” she tells him. “You know he won’t give in on this one, not easily.” Illya actually snorts at that, and Napoleon huffs a broken laugh.

“ _Da_ ,” Illya murmurs after a few long moments. “I…Cowboy, I…”

“Yeah, of course, Peril,” Napoleon says. He sits back a bit. “Come on, let’s get some food.”

Achingly slowly, Illya sits up and pushes the covers back. He’s shaky on his legs when he stands up, but neither Napoleon or Gaby make a sudden move to help him. Once on his feet, Illya squares his shoulders, and walks straight into the kitchen. Gaby glances at Napoleon as they follow him, a question on her lips, but Napoleon just shushes her and follows Illya.

“Here,” he says, setting a plate of stew down in front of him and another in front of Gaby. He sits down next to Illya, squeezing his hand briefly. “So, Gaby, what were you saying about the office rumour going around today?”

He and Gaby do all the talking as they eat, Illya silent in between them. Gaby can see Napoleon watching him out of the corner of his eye. She aches to just reach in and fix everything, to take all of the suffering that Illya has been through away, to scare off the shell shock with a scream of rage and fury that she can feel, deep within her bones, but she knows that she is only one woman. She can rail against all of the injustices served to the two men sitting at the table with her, scream at the world for everything it has done to them, but she knows it will do little to help. Instead, she swallows her rage, saves it for later when she can use it to make some sort of difference, and keeps up the chatter between her and Napoleon for something for Illya to listen to.

Eventually, Illya pushes his plate away. “It was good, Cowboy,” he mutters, and Napoleon smirks.

“The highest of compliments,” he says. “I do aim to please, Peril. Even if you always complain about how it isn’t the same as in Russia.”

There’s the barest of smiles that just about reaches Illya’s lips. “New York doesn’t have right spices,” he says.

“And by that, I think you mean vodka,” Gaby says, just to make Napoleon laugh and see the little quirk of Illya’s lips again. For a moment, a brief flash, it feels like a normal evening, where Napoleon cooks and she brings the wine, and Illya washes up afterwards whilst Napoleon sets up the chess board and Gaby switches everyone from wine to the spirit of choice. It only lasts for a moment, though, before Illya draws back into his own head.

Gaby gives Napoleon a meaningful look. “I’ll wash up,” she declares, and she starts to gather up the dishes.

“Thank you, darling,” Napoleon says. “Peril, what do you want to do?”

Illya glances up at him, and has to blink a few times before he seems to come back into the room. “Shower?” he asks.

“Of course,” Napoleon says, and he follows Illya back towards the bedroom. Gaby smirks slightly to herself, heading for the sink to start running the hot water for washing up. By the time she’s finished the shower is still running, both Napoleon and Illya in the bathroom, so she strips the bed and grabs new sheets out of the airing cupboard. She knows that she’s always loved the feeling of new sheets after a horrible day, and even if Illya is supposed to be a stone-cold KGB agent, she suspects he’ll feel the same.

Illya looks exhausted when he comes out the bathroom, hair damp, and he climbs straight into bed without a word. “Thank you, Gaby,” Napoleon murmurs to her as he puts things away around the bedroom. He glances at Illya, who’s almost motionless under the duvet. “He’ll sleep now for a while, I think. More wine?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Gaby replies, and she fetches the bottle.

Napoleon turns on the radio, turning it down to a low murmur, and they spend the rest of the evening making their way through the bottle, and then a few fingers of scotch each. Even with everything that’s gone on today, the worry thrumming through his veins over Illya, Napoleon can feel himself relaxing, if only a little, the scotch warming him and letting him lean back into the sofa. Opposite him, Gaby kicks off her shoes and curls up on the sofa, twirling a chess piece between her fingers.

“You’re a good man, Napoleon Solo,” she says at one point, the wine and scotch just starting to slur her words ever so slightly. Napoleon arches a brow, and she shakes her head. “No, you know it’s pointless to argue with me. You are a good man, no matter what you might think.”

“Gaby, darling, I may be many things,” Napoleon says, “but a good man is, I think, not one of them.” He takes a gulp of scotch. “We are too complicated to be good.”

“The two aren’t…” Gaby pauses, twirling the chess piece around. “What’s the word?”

“Mutually exclusive?” Napoleon asks wryly. “I think we’ve had a little too much drink to be talking about this, darling.” Still, he sips at his scotch again, the warmth burning down his throat. “Thank you for helping, Gaby. He needed to see you, I think.”

“He’s worried you’ll resent him for this,” Gaby says abruptly. Napoleon blinks, and she puts down the chess piece. “I told him he was an idiot, of course,” she adds. “You love him, and that means all of him, one way or another. But he probably needs to hear it from you right now.”

Napoleon’s throat works, and he swallows. “Right,” he says. “Of course.” He takes another gulp of scotch.

“Oh, darling,” Gaby says, her words starting to slur a little more. She downs the rest of her scotch in one go, throwing her head back. “You know, we once had a conversation involving far too much scotch, the night that you and Illya had that big fight over something that isn’t even important anymore. And when you were quite drunk, you told me that you think the broken edges of the two of you seem to fit together.”

Napoleon stares at her, desperately trying to remember anything of that night after he’d turned up on Gaby’s doorstep, but it’s mostly one scotch-induced blank, and he can’t come up with any reason to say that she’s lying. Gaby smirks. “You know I’m right,” she says. “And I think you were right, that night. It’s going to take a whole world more than your broken edges to tear the two of you apart.”

“That’s very…poetic,” Napoleon says, for a complete lack of anything else to say.

“You know I’m right,” Gaby says again, her grin widening. “Now, I am going to sleep here on your couch tonight, so I would like a blanket or two.” She slithers down the couch until she’s lying across it, looking like the picture of opulence, and Napoleon huffs a laugh. He gets up and drops a couple of blankets over her feet.

“I’m going to go to sleep,” he says, gently prying the scotch bottle out of her hands and putting it on the side. “I’ll see you in the morning, darling.”

“Night, Solo,” Gaby murmurs, pressing her face into a couch cushion. Napoleon smiles fondly, and then slips into the bedroom.

When he gets into bed, Illya stirs, and curls into his side. “Cowboy?” he murmurs, and Napoleon strokes a hand down his back, wrapping his arm around Illya’s waist. Even with everything today, the shell shock rearing its ugly head to do this to the man he loves, he still finds a deep fondness running through him for these moments, when they can wrap around each other and the night bears their secrets without complaint. He presses a kiss to the top of Illya’s head.

“I’m here, Peril,” he says softly. Illya hums, falling back to sleep, and Napoleon follows him soon after.

0-o-0-o-0

Gaby is perched on the desk in their office when Illya walks in, Napoleon close behind him. “Nice to see you back,” she says brightly, hopping off the desk and pressing a kiss to his cheek. “Waverly wants to see the two of you at midday.”

Napoleon arches a brow as he sets his briefcase down on his desk. “Should we be worried?” he asks. There’s a smile on his face, but Gaby can see a tinge of worry there as well. She hands them both a file, and Illya’s face drops as he flips through it.

“This is going to be impossible,” he mutters, and Napoleon looks up in alarm.

“Why?” he asks. “What’s the assignment?” He flips open the file in his hands, and his entire expression changes. He turns to Illya, a slow smile starting to creep across his face.

Illya groans, and gives Gaby a pleading look. “Please, no,” he says. “Not Paris. Anywhere but Paris.”

“Look, Peril,” Napoleon says excitedly, leaning over his shoulder and turning over a piece of paper in the file. “Look, we get to tail him in the Louvre. Oh, and the Musée d’Orsay, this is excellent!”

Illya groans again. “This mission is going to be the death of me,” he mutters. “Really, Gaby? The Louvre?” He looks over at Napoleon, who is almost hanging off his shoulder, his face a picture of excitement as he pages through the file in Illya’s hands. Gaby can’t help the smile curling her lips as Illya’s expression softens, as he shifts so Napoleon can see the file better.

“Waverly thought you’d enjoy it,” she just says, and Napoleon’s smile widens.

“I’ll need to give him an appropriate gift for this,” he muses. “Maybe one of the paintings in storage, as long as he doesn’t have any museum directors in his office frequently.”

“You can’t give Waverly one of the paintings you’ve stolen,” Illya protests. “There’s only so much he is willing to overlook.” He sighs, and hands the file over to Napoleon. “Go on, start planning what you would steal,” he says fondly. “Go get the updated security plans for the Louvre from security, so we can plan route. I’ll get final things together from last mission report.”

“Love you, Peril,” Napoleon says absent-mindedly, and he presses a kiss to the corner of Illya’s mouth as he turns away, already a gleam in his eye. Gaby smiles fondly at the expression on Illya’s face, the moment that he just stands there, his lips quirking in a quiet smile.

“Told you,” she just says. Illya gives her a look, but it only lasts a few seconds before his lips quirk again in a smile.

“You did,” he says quietly. “Next time, I’ll find it little easier to believe.” He turns to his desk, pulling open a drawer and rifling through it. Gaby heads for the door, but he reaches out and grasps her wrist, his hands gentle as they circle her wrist. “Thank you, chop shop girl,” he murmurs.

“Anytime,” Gaby says, and she can’t help the smile on her face as she slips out of their office, Illya turning to Napoleon and pulling him close as the door falls shut behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PTSD wasn't called as such until the 70s, so as far as I can tell, they did still call it shell shock at this point. The next chapter will be focusing on Gaby, and then the couple after that will be Napoleon. I'm working on the sequel to the arts professor AU at the moment, it's 25k long and not even halfway finished, and I've just started writing the angst...
> 
> Oh, and I finally got to see Hamilton in the West End AND IT WAS AMAZING! Seriously, I cried so much my mum was actually a little worried, but it was the most brilliant thing I've ever seen. If you have the chance to see it in London, you really should- the cast is brilliant. For that matter, if you haven't yet had the chance to listen to the Hamilton soundtrack, the entire thing is up on YouTube and it's wonderful.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story is now switching to focus on Gaby for a chapter. I'm trying to write her more, and write her better- I still have some work to do, as I ran out of inspiration for this section quicker than for Napoleon or Illya, but it's coming along!

When Napoleon walks into Gaby’s office, she is scribbling furiously on a piece of paper at her desk, a scowl on her face that he’s sure she isn’t quite aware of. He drops a stack of files on her desk, making her jump and the pen skid across the page.

“What was that for?” she snaps.

Napoleon doesn’t quite have an answer, beyond the need to do something with the frustration simmering beneath his skin. He knows how to deal with it, though, and he knows, looking at Gaby’s face, that now isn’t the time for a pity party for himself. “Waverly wants you to look at these files, assign preliminary handlers. And he wants us on the Norway job, once Peril can walk in a straight line.”

At that, Gaby looks up. “How’s he doing?”

“Sleeping the sleep of the concussed on the couch in our office,” Napoleon says honestly. “I’ll wake him up in an hour or so, check his brain isn’t too rattled, but he’s got a hard head. He’ll be fine.” There’s still a jump of worry as he remembers watching Illya go down, a beam of wood to the back of the head in the middle of the fight. He’d gotten up a few seconds later, gun in hand, but as soon as the fight was over and won he’d stumbled, going down on one knee. From Illya, that’s as good as a collapse, and had made Napoleon’s heart jump in his throat.

Illya is fast asleep now, beneath Napoleon’s trench coat and with a bandage wrapped around his head that has finally stopped turning pink from seeping blood. He’ll be fine, he’s had much worse hits than this, but it still makes Napoleon’s heart beat a little bit faster every time he remembers him falling.

Gaby goes back to writing her report, her knuckles almost white where she’s holding the pen so tightly. Napoleon gathers a few of the files and retreats to the couch. “I’ll just get started on these, then?” he asks, flipping the first one open. “Shout if you decide you want to talk, darling.”

It takes a few minutes of listening to the sound of her writing furiously before something snaps. Literally, in this case. Napoleon looks up to the sound of a sharp crack to see ink splatter out across the page and the desk. For a moment, there’s just the sound of Gaby’s harsh breathing.

Napoleon slowly gets to his feet, and grips her shoulder. “Come on,” he says softly. “Come with me.”

They head through the corridors of UNCLE together. Gaby is quiet, and it’s almost strange to see the ink splattered across her hands, instead of the engine oil and grease he’s used to. She’s come a long way from that dingy mechanics in East Berlin where he found her, halfway under a car, bright eyes glaring defiantly at him amongst the grime and grease, but he thinks she won’t ever lose the rough edges to her that will make her better than the lot of them, in the end.

Right now, though, after the hell that was their last mission, those rough edges are more of a hindrance than anything. Napoleon can guess at the things churning beneath her surface, the defiance that can so easily spark into rage when prompted, and he can guess what it is that might just help.

He leads Gaby into the UNCLE gym. This late at night, there’s nobody around, and Napoleon heads straight for the shelves at one edge of the room. He pulls out a pair of boxing gloves and tosses them at Gaby. “Put them on,” he says quietly, but Gaby is already pushing her hands in and strapping up her wrists. Napoleon sheds his jacket and heads to a punching bag hanging from the ceiling.

Gaby steps up to it and swings a punch at the bag. “What’s the point of this, Solo?” she gets out through gritted teeth. “Why am I here?”

“Just…you’re angry,” Napoleon says, gripping the punching bag as it swings with another blow. “This is a less destructive way of dealing with it, without snapping all the pens in UNCLE and getting ink everywhere.”

“I thought that girls weren’t meant to be angry,” Gaby spits out, swinging another punch. Napoleon holds the bag steady, and arches a brow at her.

“Darling, you’re allowed to do whatever you want with the damn mess that this mission was,” he replies. “Hell, I’m angry at it all. Anyone involved in that mission is, barring Illya, seeing as he’s asleep right now.”

Gaby throws another punch, sending the bag rocking and making Napoleon dig in his heels to keep it in place. “Then why aren’t you here throwing punches at a _schieße_ bag?” she snaps. When Napoleon doesn’t answer straight away, she pauses, and looks up at him with her dark eyes. “Well?”

Napoleon sighs, hanging his head and leaning against the bag. “Because I’ve been in this game well over a decade now, and I’m too damn cynical for my own good,” he says wearily. “I knew what was coming as soon as we intercepted that message, and it didn’t leave much room for hope.”

Gaby stares at him. “So what does that make me?” she asks. “Some naïve idiot?”

Napoleon lets out a laugh. “Gaby, darling, it makes you better than all of us.” He sees the disbelief forming in her face and he shakes his head. “It does. Illya and I, we’ve seen too much. We’ve weathered too much, and we’ve learnt what hell optimism can be. But you, with all your defiance and fierce, sharp rage at when the world is going wrong? It’s damn sure enough to keep you going long after we’ve given in to the cruelty.”

Gaby grits her teeth and swings another punch at the bag. “They were kids,” she gets out.

“I know,” Napoleon replies. Gaby shakes her head, her jaw clenching, and punches again.

“Kids,” she repeats, her voice cracking in horror and rage and fury. “Children. Forced into a war they didn’t even fucking understand!” She launches herself at the punching bag, her jaw clenched so hard there’s a muscle ticking, that Napoleon half fears that she might shatter from the pressure.

“And what do we do?” she gets out between punches. “We fucking stand there! We fucking do nothing, because to do something would mess up years of work, and yet it still is fucked up in the end!” She pauses, panting for breath, and aims a half-hearted punch at the bag. “We’re never going to win this, are we?”

“As much as I like calling this a game,” Napoleon says wryly. “There is no winning this. There’s always going to be someone else corrupt enough, or rich enough, or powerful enough, or just simply mad enough to want to watch the world burn. And we’re always going to be there to stop them.” He smiles wryly. “The dance of the spies continues, Gaby, though the partners change every once in a while.”

Gaby just shakes her head. “It’s not fair,” she mutters, and she swings at the punching bag. “It’s not fair. It’s not fucking fair!” She lunges again at the punching bag, a fierce battery of punches that make Napoleon dig his heels in to hold her back, until she slumps, exhausted, against the bag. “It’s not fair,” she mutters again.

“Gaby,” Napoleon says, his voice low. She looks up at him, her jaw trembling, and Napoleon grabs her arm. “All of this?” he says, “all this rage that you feel like you can’t control coursing through you right now? Take it. Use it, keep it burning when you need it to. Gaby, this is how you survive, this is how you keep going when everything else in your body is telling you it’s too much.”

Gaby heaves in a breath, and then in one swift movement straightens, tugs off the gloves and plants her feet. “Teach me how to fight,” she says, her voice burning in her throat. “Teach me how to win.”

0-o-0-o-0

Napoleon helps Illya through the door and deposits him on the couch. “Sit there, you’re bleeding again,” he says as Gaby shuts the door behind them. “I’ll get some bandages.” He heads into the kitchen and pulls out the first aid kit from underneath the sink.

“Chop shop girl,” he can hear Illya say, his voice little more than a murmur. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Gaby says, and it’s the tone of her voice that makes Napoleon pretend to hunt for the bandages for a little while longer, to put the kettle on and pull out some mugs. There’s a pause from the living room.

“Chop shop girl,” Illya says again, his voice patient. “What is it?”

Gaby’s voice is muffled when she next speaks, and even from the kitchen, Napoleon can hear the tremble in her voice that she’s trying to hide. “It’s not fair,” she murmurs. “It…what is it the hell we are doing?”

“What we can,” Illya says evenly. “What we have to.”

“I just…I’m so _angry_ ,” Gaby says. “So furious at all of this. I’m just one person, half the time I don’t even know if what I’m doing is right, or good, or-”

“As Napoleon is fond of saying,” Illya interrupts, “we are too complicated to be good. But that’s okay, we don’t have to be good all the time. As long as we’re moving things in right direction.”

“How do you know?” Gaby asks. “How the hell do you know that what we’re doing is the right thing?”

There’s silence from Illya, and Napoleon leaves the kitchen to lean against the doorway. “We don’t,” he says simply. “Not for certain. But it’s when you’re certain that you become complacent. When you know, for sure, that you’re doing the right thing? That’s when you stop questioning whether or not what you’re doing is right, is whatever measure of good that you have.” He shrugs at Gaby’s look. “Complacency is the worst thing one of us can learn.”

Illya looks up at him, and Napoleon isn’t sure whether it’s the concussion that’s making him freer with his words and expression, but there’s a fondness on his face that could almost take Napoleon’s breath away. He smiles back helplessly, at how Illya has wrapped an arm around Gaby’s shoulders, how she’s curled up against him looking so small, and yet still full of that blazing defiance that Napoleon loves about her.

He knows that soon enough, when she has more experience in this bloody game, she’ll be better than all of them. He curses himself for not having seen it all sooner, for being cynical enough to think at the beginning that she was too innocent, too naïve, to last for too long. He should have known better.

“Here, Peril, let me redo the bandage,” he says. Illya shifts away to let Napoleon sit behind him, and Napoleon begins unwrapping the bandages around his head, wincing as they stick to dried blood in his hair. “Medical could have cleaned this up a little more,” he mutters.

“It’s good enough,” Illya replies. “Just put something on it so I can sleep.” He winces as Napoleon tugs slightly at the bandages, grits his teeth but says nothing as Napoleon pulls them away.

“Gaby, there’s tea brewing in the kitchen,” Napoleon says over Illya’s shoulder. “Help yourself.”

“Excellent,” Gaby says, getting to her feet. “I’m adding vodka to mine. I assume the bottle is in the usual place?” She doesn’t bother waiting for an answer as she heads into the kitchen.

“She’ll be okay,” Illya murmurs as Napoleon pulls away the last of the bandages. “She is tough.”

“I know,” Napoleon replies. “We’re all allowed an off day or two, here and there. Especially after a mission like this.” He presses a new dressing to the stitches on the back of Illya’s head. “Hold this here whilst I sort out the bandages.”

Illya reaches up obediently. “She will be better than us,” he says after a few moments. “In the end. She is not weary like we are.”

Napoleon hums. “Oh, believe me, I know,” he replies. He’s thinking of the way she railed at the injustice of this mission, how he was surprised, at first, at her objections. He’s thinking that maybe he’s forgotten what Gaby hasn’t, yet, if he ever knew it in the first place. The war tore so many things out of him, just as it did Illya, that he can’t even keep track of it. He knows that Gaby, though, is strong enough to keep count of everything she stands to lose, and to dig her fingers in to keep hold of them with everything she has. He also knows how rare that is. “She’ll have the both of us out of a job eventually. We just have to make sure we get her there, I suppose.”

Illya huffs a quiet laugh, and then winces at the movement. Napoleon gives him a look, even though he can’t see it, but Illya stills anyway. “She’ll get there,” he murmurs, glancing over at the kitchen where Gaby is helping herself to a generous addition of vodka to one of the mugs. “With or without us, I think. We just need to make sure she doesn’t hold on too tightly to some things in case she loses others.”

Napoleon presses a kiss to Illya’s neck, and hums in agreement. “Of course, love,” he says. “Now, stay still and let me finish this. Waverly wants us in Norway as soon as you can walk in a straight line without falling over, his words and not mine. And I have a vested interest in keeping this head as whole as possible.”

Illya snorts, and then winces again at the movement. “Pretty words, Cowboy,” he says. He tries to turn his head to look over at him, but Napoleon pushes his head back into place and presses a kiss to his neck again. He pauses. “Do you ever wonder where it went?”

“Where what went?” Napoleon asks. Illya glances over at Gaby, who is rifling through the cupboards looking for food.

“Where that fire went,” he murmurs quietly. “That fury over injustice that she has, that makes her better than us. Do you think we ever had it?”

Napoleon hums. “The concussion has made you talkative,” he remarks. “But yes, I think we probably had it, some long time ago. It was beaten out of us by everything we’ve done, and it’s a hard thing to get back. Gaby, somehow, has kept hold of it, and we’ll do what we can to make sure that continues.” He finishes the bandage, securing it with a strip of surgical tape. “There you go, Peril, all bandaged up again.”

“Thank you, Cowboy,” Illya says, twisting to press a kiss to Napoleon’s lips. Napoleon deepens it slightly, pulling Illya in as best he can with a hand behind his neck. Illya goes willingly, for a little while at least before the concussion gets the better of him and he winces. Reluctantly, Napoleon pulls back.

“You should go to bed, Peril,” he murmurs against Illya’s lips. “Get some rest. We have to be on a plane to Norway in a couple of days.”

“ _Da_ ,” Illya murmurs. He gets up, only wavering slightly, and pads into the bedroom.

“Will he be alright?” Gaby asks as he shuts the door behind him.

Napoleon turns to her. “He has a hard head,” he says wryly. He studies her, the mug of tea in her hand, the bottle of vodka behind her on the kitchen counter. “Will you?”

Gaby hesitates for a long moment, before nodding. “I think so,” she says, letting herself all but fall down into the armchair opposite Napoleon. “After some vodka.” Napoleon huffs a laugh at that, and she smiles sharply. “I heard you, by the way. The two of you talking, just now.”

“I didn’t think you wouldn’t,” Napoleon counters, arching a brow. “But we still meant it. It will make you better than all of us, in the end.” Gaby flushes, just enough alcohol to make her nod and not argue, and Napoleon thinks that maybe, just maybe, she’ll believe him come morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So next chapter will move on to focusing on Napoleon, and there will probably be two more chapters before this is wrapped up. The sequel to the arts professor AU is also still in the works, sitting at about 30k as of now and probably about halfway through, so it's looking promising!
> 
> It's still raining here in England, which is getting very annoying, but I have ice cream so it's all okay for now.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am very sleep deprived right now, so forgive these notes not being as comprehensive or well-written as they usually are (not that they're incredibly well-written in the first place). I am very grateful for the fact that I am incapable of publishing anything unless it is finished first, all I have to do now is upload the chapter.
> 
> It's Napoleon's turn now, I hope you like it.

When Illya wakes up, the other side of the bed is empty, and already cold. He rolls over, wincing as he looks at the clock on the bedside table. The balcony doors are pulled shut, the rain lashing down against them, but there’s a light on in the living room, shining through the crack under the door. Illya sighs, and gets out of bed.

Napoleon is sitting in the living room, head bent over what looks like a sketchbook. He barely glances up as Illya pads over and leans down to press a kiss to the top of his head. His hair is damp, and Illya frowns. “Have you been outside?” he asks.

“Just for a bit,” Napoleon replies, angling the sketchbook so Illya can’t quite see what he’s drawing. “Weather isn’t great, but it looks like it will blow over by the evening.”

Illya hums, and heads into the kitchen to get himself some coffee. Judging by the weather and how Napoleon’s hair curls when it gets wet, it was a while since he was outside, which means that he’s been awake for longer. He glances around the kitchen, checking the drinks cabinet quickly. Nothing looks out of place, but then Napoleon is too good to make a mistake like that.

“Waverly wants us in for the Israel briefing,” Napoleon calls out from the living room. “It’s at eight, I think.”

“Half eight,” Illya corrects him. He leans against the doorway and sips at his coffee, studying Napoleon. After so long together, he’s learnt to recognise the warning signs when it comes to days like these.

People who don’t know Napoleon would think he’s unflappable, but Illya knows that he is human like the rest of them, and he knows that there are days where everything is too close to the surface and the entire world scrapes against him. Napoleon, trying to make light of it all one evening when he’d had too much scotch, had likened it to when he’d been on the ship over from England to Calais during the war and a freak storm had hit them, the waves crashing against the side of the ship and sending them sprawling across the deck. More than one soldier had spent the journey all but hanging off the side of the ship, and it hadn’t just been the motion of the ship that had sent their stomachs roiling.

Illya gets ready quietly around Napoleon, placing a couple of slices of toast in front of him on his way past to the bedroom as Napoleon rips up the page he’d been working it on, dropping it on the coffee table. Whilst Napoleon is in the bathroom, he hunts around the bedroom for a few minutes, piling his finds into a duffel bag. Napoleon arches a brow at it as he comes out, towel around his waist. “What’s that?” he asks.

“Tech Gaby wanted,” Illya answers. “Some KGB things she wants to take apart to see how they work.” Napoleon nods, and heads for the closet, fingers tapping a beat against the closet door as he opens it. Illya tries not to breathe out a sigh of relief that Napoleon hadn’t questioned it, but it’s muted by the fact that Napoleon hadn’t questioned it at all, that he’s distracted enough by whatever is in his own head to overlook it.

“Come on,” Napoleon says over his shoulder as he heads for the door. “Waverly will have our heads if we’re late again, and this Israel briefing is actually important.”

“Coming, Cowboy,” Illya says. He shoulders the duffel bag, grabs his coat, and follows Napoleon out of the door. He manages to get the frown off his face before Napoleon turns and sees him.

When they get into UNCLE, Gaby is waiting for them in their office. “Waverly wants you now for the Israel briefing,” she says, hopping off Napoleon’s desk. “And then there’s a situation in Ecuador potentially unfolding. Looks like it’s going to be a long day.”

“We’ll deal with it,” Illya says. He glances at Napoleon, but he’s busy rifling through his desk, looking for something. Gaby arches a brow, and he quietly shakes his head. He hands Gaby the duffel. “Here, the tech you wanted,” he says, giving her a meaningful look.

Gaby unzips the duffel to see Napoleon’s collection of lockpicks and tools, a couple of handguns and a long knife, safe in its leather sheath. She stares at him for a moment, and then slowly nods as she zips the bag back up. “Thanks,” she says. “Want them back this evening?”

“Tomorrow is fine,” Illya says steadily. “Keep hold of them for tonight.”

Gaby arches a brow at that, glancing over at Napoleon, but she shoulders the bag anyway with a decisive nod. “You should head for Waverly’s office now,” she says. “I have to go and deal with China again, but I’ll probably see you in an hour or two.” She gives Illya another look, which he returns steadily, and then slips out the door.

“Cowboy,” Illya says as he grabs a couple of files off his desk. “We should go.” He doesn’t get a response, so he turns to Napoleon, who is still rifling through his desk. “Cowboy? What are you looking for?”

“That damn penknife I keep around here somewhere,” Napoleon mutters, not looking up as he opens another drawer. He waves a hand at a package on his desk. Illya wanders over and picks it up, frowning at the faint rattling inside. “It’s something from the labs,” Napoleon says. “I’d asked them for an upgrade of my receiver after I missed those bugs on the previous mission, but now I can’t find the damn penknife to open the package.”

“You took it home three days ago to fix broken spring,” Illya points out mildly. Napoleon curses, slamming one of the drawers shut abruptly, and Illya rounds the desk. “Cowboy,” he says quietly. He reaches out and takes Napoleon’s hands in his, pulling him close and smoothing his thumbs over the backs of Napoleon’s hands. “You okay?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer.

Napoleon takes a sharp breath, his throat working for a moment. He leans forwards, and Illya keeps hold of his hands as he presses his forehead into the crook of his neck, just for a moment. “Just one of those days, Peril,” he mutters against Illya’s shoulder. “One of those fucking days, and it’s only just started.”

“It’ll be over before you know it,” Illya says. “Come on. Package can wait until later. Let’s go see what Waverly has for us now.” He lets go of Napoleon’s hands, but only so he can cup his face and tilt it up, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “It’ll be okay, Cowboy.”

“Oh, I know,” Napoleon says, and Illya watches as he slots the smirk back into place on his face. Illya smooths his thumb across Napoleon’s jaw, pausing just short of the corner of his mouth. It’s both a gesture to try and calm him, to ground him somewhat, and something to let Napoleon know that he knows the smile is a fake, is a cover to try and dig in and reclaim some ground, but that he’ll let it stand for now.

“We shouldn’t keep Waverly waiting,” Napoleon says, the façade firmly back in place, and he slips past Illya to head for the door. Illya, as he always does, follows him without hesitation.

0-o-0-o-0

The day is long, more frustrating than a usual day at UNCLE, and Illya spends most of it watching as Napoleon becomes more and more tightly wound. Nothing goes seriously wrong, nobody dies, but there are small mistakes and frustrations that build up upon each other, one after another, like a poorly balanced fire that could collapse and snuff every flame out as soon as the fire licks through the weakening logs at the base.

Gaby corners Illya in the hallway at one point, Napoleon staying behind to sort out a mess that a rookie agent had gotten themselves into. “How is he?” she asks.

Illya glances behind them at the door Napoleon is still stuck behind. “You know how he can get,” he says slowly. “He’ll be okay. It’s just not good day for him, and all of this isn’t helping.” He grits his teeth in frustration. “He can cope now. It’s when we get home that he’ll be…difficult.”

“Anything I can do to help?” Gaby asks, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ve seen him tightly strung like this before, but normally we’re on a mission and he can shoot something, eventually, or do something else to take the edge off. Is there anything…” She trails off as Illya gives her a look, and to Gaby’s credit, she manages not to blush. “I can leave you to take that burden,” she says wryly, when she’s found her voice again. “Still, is there anything I can do?”

“Keep hold of his lockpicks and the things I gave you,” Illya tells her. “Keep him away from coffee for the rest of the day. Don’t call attention to it, though, he still struggles being vulnerable around me like this, let alone in the middle of UNCLE.” They’ve come a long way since they both fell into this relationship, though falling implies they didn’t know what they were getting into and they did, they both walked into this knowing full well what could happen and the things that kept each other up at night. Now, when Illya has those days where everything that has carved deep gouges into his bones rises to the surface and drags him back down with them, when the world becomes little more than white static around him even as he rails against it, he at least knows Napoleon is waiting there on the other side. And when Napoleon can’t keep still, when everything around him scrapes against him until even the quiet is too much, he likes to think that Napoleon knows Illya will be there at the end of it.

Gaby sighs. “Any triggers we can avoid next time?” she asks. “I know there aren’t always easy things to identify, but sometimes there is.” She thinks particularly of that mission that was Turkey, where Illya and Napoleon had gone out ahead on a reconnaissance job and had inadvertently stumbled upon the end of a massacre by separatist rebels, completely unrelated to the job they had been sent there to do. They had gotten there too late to do anything beyond try and piece bodies together and help the few survivors bury them, and when Waverly had extracted them, it had taken days before either of them had fully come back into themselves.

Illya shakes his head. “Not that I know of,” he says quietly. “I just woke up this morning to cold side of the bed. I think it’s something in his own head, this time, not anything to do with job. Shell shock is nasty thing.”

Gaby hums. “Funny, he says the same thing about you,” she muses. She knows Illya doesn’t like talking about it much, and it’s still true now, because he presses his lips together in a thin line and looks away briefly. Gaby refrains from sighing, and from the urge to batter down the walls that surround the two emotionally repressed idiots she’s somehow taken some sort of responsibility for, and who have somehow become some of her dearest friends. Instead, she just shakes her head and purses her lips. “I think that thing needs a new name.”

Illya pauses, and then shrugs. “Not my place,” he replies. “I just need to make sure Napoleon doesn’t break something he’s fond of tonight.” He pauses, looking down at her. “You might want to stay away, tonight. When he finds out I took his lockpicks he’ll get angry, and with how he’s been today, I don’t know how he will react.”

Gaby nods. “I’ll come by in the morning, then, before work,” she says. “I’ll bring bagels, or maybe those pastries from the patisserie if I get up early enough. Check in on the damage.” Illya snorts at that, shaking his head at her.

“Don’t look so worried, chop shop girl,” he says. “We will be intact in morning. We will weather it like usual.” He knows that, without any doubt. He knows that there is very, very little that would make him walk away from Napoleon, and definitely not the beasts in the darkness that keep him up at night. It would be somewhat hypocritical, after all.

The door opens, and Napoleon very carefully doesn’t slam it shut behind him. “Peril, give me a hand with this mess,” he calls out.

“And that’s my cue to leave,” Gaby says. “I need to brief Waverly on something.” She presses a brief kiss to Illya’s cheek. “Take care of him, will you?”

Ilya gives her a look, because she knows that he would do nothing less. Napoleon is waiting down the corridor and Illya turns to him, instantly noticing the way he’s standing, the tic in the muscle of his jaw, the hundred small things that he’s become so attuned to in the man he loves, and he hurries to him in case those few extra seconds can help, even just that little bit more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the sleep deprivation thing- don't worry, I'll be fine! I work with horses and was competing on Saturday, which meant my alarm went off at 3:50am and I had a whole day of being hyped up on adrenaline and doing a pretty physically taxing sport (riding a horse is very hard work, especially the cross country).  
> And then of course I had to get up at 6:50am this morning to go and work at the yard, because they were short-staffed. For some reason, I do this sport voluntarily. I'm not sure why.
> 
> Anyway, there will be one more chapter of this story, up in a few days, and after that I'll start publishing the big Tour AU! I'm working on the arts professor AU sequel as well, it's getting somewhere now. So I'm not going anywhere.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, I said this chapter would be up in a few days, and then I got distracted by uni and work and horses, and I've only just gotten around to sorting this out! This is the final chapter of this story, thanks so much to everyone who has read it and been following it, you all mean so much to me.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> Edit: I forgot to say, the bit about bread in this chapter (you'll see what I mean) was heavily inspired by the amazing fic i wanna get better (I think the author has gone from ao3, as I can't find the fic to link it).

Illya rolls over and watches as Napoleon slips out of bed, heading into the bathroom. He grimaces at the stickiness on his skin, half considering following Napoleon into the bathroom, but then he remembers how frantic Napoleon’s movements had been as they’d stumbled back into the bedroom, shedding clothing as quickly as they could. He remembers the way Napoleon’s hands had almost been trembling as he’d unbuckled Illya’s belt, pushing him back onto the bed, the almost pleading look in his eyes as they’d laid there afterwards, catching their breath, and he decides to leave it for now.

Napoleon drops a cold washcloth on his chest as he walks back out, a sharp smile on his face that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Bathroom’s all yours,” he says, and he starts collecting the trail of discarded clothing that leads out of the bedroom and towards the front door of their apartment.

Illya props himself up on one elbow. “You can leave that for a moment, Cowboy,” he says quietly, but Napoleon just shakes his head and follows the trail out of the bedroom door, shaking out his discarded shirt and folding it over his arm. Illya is half surprised he doesn’t just get out the ironing board straight away, the way he’s been today.

He can tell that sooner or later, it’s all going to spill over, but there’s nothing much he can do until it does. The army had long ago drilled into him the tenets of _hurry up and wait_ , but when it comes to Napoleon, the inaction is so much harder. All he wants to do is wrap Napoleon up in his arms and somehow get into through that thick skull of his that it’s okay, that he can be vulnerable and Illya will love him for it anyway, but he knows that would never work.

The major he served under in the spetsnaz was always fond of telling the story of an unnamed man who escaped from a Soviet gulag during the war and walked to India just by putting one foot in front of the other until he walked across half of Russia. Illya was never quite sure whether the story had any truth to it at all, and he was even less sure that a spetsnaz team should have been told it so frequently, but the major had always emphasised the importance of merely putting one foot in front of the other. Amongst the team it had turned into somewhat of a joke, answers to why they couldn’t carry out an order often along the lines of explanations of how they’d lost their feet, more and more creative answers being given the longer the assignment was drawn out.

Now, Illya is quite thankful for the enduring patience all but beaten into him in Russia. Patience isn’t quite the right word for it, seeing that he’s as impatient as Napoleon in some regards, but when he has an objective, a target in his sights, he can sit and wait for days for the right opportunity if he needs to.

Illya hauls himself out of bed and into the bathroom, taking as little as time as possible to clean up. Even so, once he’s dressed and heads out into the living room, Napoleon is already bustling around in the kitchen. Illya sighs, but doesn’t intervene. Normally, Napoleon can keep it under control as long as his hands are busy and he has something to do. It will be later, when the day finally catches up with them, that it could all go to hell.

But today has been long, and particularly frustrating. Illya is reading over a file at the kitchen table when Napoleon abruptly pauses. “Stir that for a moment,” he says over his shoulder as he heads for the living room. “I want to check something quickly.”

Illya stirs at the sauce simmering on the hob, and watches Napoleon as he disappears into the bedroom. It only takes a few moments before he reappears, his eyes narrowed as he stalks back into the kitchen. “Where are my lockpicks?” he snaps at Illya. “And my spare handgun? I know for a fact that I cleaned that gun last week and put it back where it lives, and now that compartment is empty. Where is everything?”

Illya calmly switches off the hob, turning to face Napoleon. “I gave them to Gaby for tonight,” he says, and Napoleon flinches at his words.

“Gaby?” he asks, his voice incredulous. “Why the hell does Gaby have them?” He pauses, and Illya can see him linking things together. “That was what was in that damn bag this morning?”

Illya nods. “I woke up and bed was cold,” he says, studying Napoleon’s face. This is the difficult part, knowing what words will help and what will only make Napoleon angrier. “You had been up for hours,” he adds. “You had been outside in that awful weather. I figured today was going to be difficult, so I removed the temptations to try and help.”

Napoleon’s eyes narrow. “You had no right to do that,” he snaps. “There is no damn temptation, I’m not a complete idiot like you might think. I was just checking they were there.”

Illya doesn’t manage to stop himself from rolling his eyes. “We have been through this before, Cowboy,” he reminds him. “You check once, and then you check them again, and then they are in your pocket and I am stopping you walking out the door. Again.” He folds his arms and levels Napoleon with a look. “You know I’m right.”

“Damnit, Peril,” Napoleon spits, turning half away from him. “I’m not that much of an idiot.” Illya just gives him another look, looking pointedly at the way Napoleon’s fingers are trembling and tapping against his forearm as he stands there with his arms crossed, the clench of his jaw that’s making a muscle stand out against the sharp line of his jaw.

“I know, Cowboy,” Illya says softly. “I know.”

Napoleon stares determinedly at the other wall, not looking at Illya. “You shouldn’t have taken them away,” he insists.

“When my shell shock drags me into my own head,” Illya says, trying not to shudder as he remembers those days where the world turns into static, where he can’t even get out of bed without Napoleon there to shoulder some of the world for him. “When that happens, you take my guns and my knives. You put them in that safe behind your Renoir and you change the combination. Why?”

Napoleon finally turns to him, if only to stare incredulously. “Because...because!” he says finally. “Because I worry about you, because even if it’s never gotten that bad I can’t help but worry, I can’t help but feel a little better when those things are out of your reach on those days. I know the type of things that haunt you, if only the shadows of them, and I worry that one day they might, just maybe, break through to try and get you!”

“I don’t blame you for it, Cowboy,” Illya says, trying to keep his voice even. “But do you see why I took your lockpicks?”

“It’s not the same!” Napoleon snaps. “It’s not the damn same!”

“Why?” Illya snaps back. _Because I might use them?_ he thinks, but he will never allow those words to ever leave his lips, and they stay safely locked away. “Why isn’t it the same?” he asks instead. “Can’t I be worried about you as well, Cowboy? Go on, why isn’t it the same?”

Napoleon stares at him, trying to find any words, any words at all. He can feel that restless thrum beneath his skin grow, churning and writhing and desperate for some sort of escape. Despite his best efforts, he can feel his breath coming sharp in his chest, his eyes beginning to sting. He turns away from Illya, trying desperately to regain some sort of control before he loses it all completely.

“Cowboy,” Illya says softly, and then he reaches out for him, unable to hold himself back any longer. He smooths his hands down Napoleon’s arms, and just like that Napoleon takes a shuddering breath and the tears spill down his cheeks. He turns to Illya, jaw clenched so tight he looks like he might shatter, and falls into his embrace.

Illya wraps his arms around him, and Napoleon presses his face into the crook of his neck, his breath hitching. “I can’t stop,” he mutters. “I can’t…I can’t stop moving and thinking and needing to do something, but nothing is enough, nothing stops it and I…I can’t _stop_.” His breath hitches, coming in short gasps against Illya’s neck.

Illya smooths a hand down Napoleon’s back, over and over again. “It’s okay, Cowboy,” he murmurs, rocking slightly from side to side as they stand in the kitchen, dinner forgotten on the hob. “It’s okay. You can have these days, you can have this, it doesn’t make you any less of person. It doesn’t make me love you any less.”

Napoleon’s breath hitches again. “I just want it to _stop_ ,” he says, his voice a soft whine against Illya’s skin. Now that he’s given in he clings to Illya unreservedly, wrapping his arms around his waist and letting the pretences that he’d been shoring up all day fall away.

“It will,” Illya says, trying his best to be soothing. It’s not something that comes naturally to him, but he’s learning. “What do you always say to me when shell shock has me, what Gaby insists on telling me every time? It will stop, Cowboy, I promise.”

“We’re spies,” Napoleon mutters against his neck. “We shouldn’t promise anything.”

Illya huffs a soft laugh, pressing a kiss to the top of Napoleon’s head. “I know,” he says. “But this time, we can make exception.” He knows that promises are dangerous things in their line of work, is the one who first said that they should not make promises, and for the most part he believes that. They’ve had enough close calls already, and he still knows that there’s a high chance he’ll die in this job, at the end of a gun or a knife or any other way people decide to try and kill him. He will never promise Napoleon that won’t happen, never become complacent enough to hurt him like that, but he thinks that this is something he can just about promise.

“It will stop,” he just says. “It will stop. You will be okay.” Napoleon doesn’t say anything, shaking in Illya’s arms, and Illya just holds onto him and tries to ground him however he can.

Eventually, after long enough that Illya can feel his shirt damp over his shoulder, Napoleon clears his throat and pulls back. He opens his mouth to say something, but Illya cups his face in his hands and shakes his head. “You don’t let me apologise for mine,” he says. “So you don’t have to apologise for yours.”

Napoleon sighs and looks past him. A frown furrows his brow, and he slips past Illya to the hob. Even Illya, who will freely admit he knows little about cooking beyond how to survive, can see that whatever Napoleon had been making is ruined. “Damnit,” Napoleon mutters. He leans against the hob for a few moments, and then abruptly snatches the pot off the hob and dumps the contents in the bin. He all but throws the pot into the sink, the spoon following it soon after.

“I’ve got this,” Illya says. “There’s some frozen stew I can heat up.” He smooths a hand across Napoleon’s shoulders as he heads for the freezer, and he can feel Napoleon shiver under his touch. “What do you need, Cowboy?”

“I need a drink,” Napoleon mutters. “Or a cigarette.” He sighs, raking his hand through his hair. “But both are a bad idea.” He runs a hand across his face, and Illya pretends to not notice how it’s trembling. “I don’t know, Peril,” Napoleon mutters. “I…I don’t know.”

“It’s okay,” Illya quickly says before Napoleon can work himself into some sort of panic. “That’s okay, you don’t need to know. Can you get out some bread to have with this?” He pokes at the frozen block of stew that’s now slowly defrosting in a pot on the hob. “Do we have any of that sourdough left, one I bought a couple days ago?”

Napoleon blinks, coming back into himself, and brushes past Illya as he crosses the kitchen. He doesn’t need to, his apartment is anything but small and there’s plenty of space in the kitchen, but Napoleon still brushes past him like they’re in one of those small safehouses in the middle of nowhere and they can barely stand in a room without touching each other. Illya doesn’t react to it, letting Napoleon draw what comfort he can from where he can find it.

“The bread is a bit stale,” Napoleon says, poking at it dubiously. “There’s some of that baguette I bought yesterday, that should still be fresh.”

Illya scoffs. “We have been through this before, Cowboy,” he says over his shoulder. “You cannot have baguette with stew, you need bread that can stand on its own. Baguette will just get taken over by flavour of stew and you know it.”

“But the whole point is the stew,” Napoleon protests. “If you have a denser bread like that then you’re confusing the flavour that you’re getting. You want something like a baguette that supports the flavour without trying to take it over.”

Illya rolls his eyes. “You are wrong and you know it,” he replies. “But use sourdough if baguette will stay fresh for another day. We should use it up.”

Napoleon sighs, but pulls out the sourdough anyway. “You know, this is undeniably the good part of capitalism,” he points out. “You can throw this away, you know. It’s not that big a crime.”

“It is wasteful,” Illya says firmly. “And it needs eating. Cut some slices.”

Napoleon pulls out the bread knife, his fingers only twitching slightly around the handle. “Is this one of your spetsnaz tricks for how to make stale bread whole again?” he asks.

Illya scoffs, picking the slices of bread up. “In spetsnaz we ate what we got and were glad for it,” he says. “No, this is Soviet trick. After my father, we learnt to make most out of what we had. Mother always tried to make food like we’d had before, and she taught me how to do this.” He turns on the tap and then sticks the pieces of bread under the running water.

Napoleon arches a brow. “In the army we just ate it stale,” he says. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

Illya just gives him a look at that, and then places the pieces of bread on a baking tray and sticks it in the oven. “This will work, Cowboy,” he just says. “If nothing else, trust in my mother’s pride to make sure we didn’t have to eat stale bread during those years.”

Napoleon has nothing to say in response to that, so he just arches a brow and nods. The restlessness beneath his skin has quietened somewhat, but he knows that it won’t last for long, that it is only prowling and searching for a new way through. But Illya, staring at the stew like his glare will be enough to make it defrost quicker, Illya and all his quiet enduring stubbornness, is enough to keep it at arm’s length for now.

They eat quickly, Illya just dumping the bowls into the sink afterwards and pulling Napoleon away when he goes to wash up. “They can be left until tomorrow,” he says quietly, running a hand down Napoleon’s arm as if his touch can scare away the restless prowling starting to find its way back. He pulls him away, never quite letting go of him.

Napoleon ends up on the couch, curled up against Illya’s side with something on the television, volume turned down low. There’s a tightness in his chest that his treacherous body keeps telling him means that it’s difficult to breathe, even though he knows there’s enough air being drawn into his lungs with every breath. His hands can’t stay still, fiddling with the cuff of his shirt until Illya reaches over and picks up one of the trinkets sitting on the coffee table, a star puzzle that he pulls apart and gives to Napoleon wordlessly.

Napoleon breathes out, and tries to ignore how his hands shake slightly as he reaches for the puzzle pieces. As soon as he pauses, as soon as his hands stop moving for even a few moments, he can feel the whispering restlessness start to sink back into his fingers, that urge that had him fleeing from the war and running across Europe, never stopping because it would mean letting everything catch up with him, everything that he trails in his wake. For a brief moment he can see himself getting up and leaving, getting on the next plane out of New York, crossing an ocean and running across Europe again, flitting between museums and galleries and the darker underworld that he likes to pretend he doesn’t know until finally the glamour that he’s always known to be false wears off completely, until there’s a gun in a deserted alleyway or a knife in a hotel room and he loses the last few shreds of what he’d torn to pieces and left in his wake.

Illya shifts, drawing him slightly closer into him and pressing an absent-minded kiss to the top of Napoleon’s head. Just like that, the thoughts are subdued, and Napoleon can wrestle them back down to the corners of his mind he doesn’t like to look at too often. Getting rid of them is asking too much, because he knows he always needs an exit, but for now, curled up on the couch with the man he loves, he thinks he can ignore those thoughts for a while longer.

He fits the star puzzle back together for Illya to just give him a more complicated one, and absently thinks that even if he’s always going to need an exit, an escape plan just in case this all goes wrong, he shouldn’t be surprised that Illya is the one thing he doesn’t think he could ever bear to leave behind.

0-o-0-o-0

They stagger through the door and collapse in various ways in the apartment. Illya, expression going blank now that they’ve made it somewhere safe and he can finally let his guard down, all but falls onto the couch, yet another head wound making him stumble over his own feet as the adrenaline wears off. Napoleon starts for him, but never quite get there before Illya turns his face into the cushions on the couch. Gaby heads straight for the drinks cabinet, pulling out the vodka bottle and a glass. Both hit the counter with a little more force than necessary, her hand trembling around the neck of the bottle and her face pinched in anger.

Napoleon flits around the apartment, going into the bedroom to grab a blanket that Gaby takes to drape over Illya, then into the kitchen where he starts rummaging around in the cabinets and fridge. Illya shifts just enough to look up at Gaby, and he reaches out to gently squeeze one of her hands. He mutters a few words in German to her, his voice soft, and a little of that fierce anger leeches out of her. She doesn’t put down the vodka yet, but it’s a start.

Napoleon makes something to eat, and the living room falls all but silent as they sit around and try not to think of all the ways the mission became an unmitigated disaster, and how the hell they managed to pull it off anyway. Napoleon sits still just long enough to finish eating, and then is back on his feet, restlessness sharpened by the dregs of adrenaline into something that sends him prowling around the room, twisting his signet ring round and around his finger.

“I think Illya’s bleeding again,” Gaby says, frowning down at him. “Solo, where’s your med kit?”

“I’ll do it,” Napoleon says, heading into the kitchen and getting the kit out from underneath the sink. He sits down on the couch, gently grasping Illya’s shoulder. “Your head is bleeding, Peril,” he says, his voice suddenly soft. “I’m just going to rewrap it, so I need you to sit up for me, okay?”

Illya pushes himself up, the blanket sliding off his shoulders to pool in his lap. Napoleon steadies him, and then starts cutting away the bandage around his head. “You’re lucky you have a hard head, Peril,” he says as he pulls the dressing away and presses a fresh one to it to wipe up the trickle of blood from the gash. Illya winces, and Gaby offers him the vodka.

“How are you doing, chop shop girl?” Illya asks, trying to turn his head without disrupting Napoleon as he tries to clean up the wound and check it over. “At least that is not my good vodka.”

“Oh no, the good vodka is for a real crisis,” Gaby says wryly as she takes another sip from the bottle. “This is for the mild ones.” She offers it to him again, her smile a shade or two too sharp to be real, but Illya shakes his head.

“Stay still,” Napoleon chides him, and Illya rolls his eyes at Gaby. It’s cut off halfway through by a wince as Napoleon pulls on the wound a little, trying to clean it as best he can, and this time Illya takes the vodka when Gaby offers it.

Napoleon presses a new dressing to Illya’s head and wraps a bandage around it, as best he can whilst trying to keep the dressing in place. “There,” he says. “More or less intact.”

Illya hums, and slumps against Napoleon. Gaby watches as he slides further down the couch until his head is in Napoleon’s lap, and she pulls the blanket back up over his shoulders as she makes her slightly unsteady way to the armchair next to the couch. There’s a small smile curling Napoleon’s lips, though it’s fragile, and he starts combing his fingers through Illya’s hair.

Gaby pauses as she’s about to curl up in the armchair, and instead she heads for the record player on the side. She picks out one of Napoleon’s records that she knows is quiet enough, some sort of jazz that she thinks he might have bought for Illya, who hardly indulges himself by buying a record for himself, and puts it on.

“Good choice,” Napoleon murmurs as the music starts up, a low piano softly winding its way through the apartment, the air lightening with the quiet notes. Napoleon keeps running his hand through Illya’s hair, his other hand resting on Illya’s neck and softly tapping out the rhythm. Illya hums, one hand resting loosely on Napoleon’s thigh, and Gaby watches as he seems to slowly drift off to sleep.

She curls up on the armchair now, tucking her feet underneath her and reaching for the vodka. Napoleon doesn’t say anything as she takes another gulp, only gives her a weary smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but that comes closer with every passing moment that Illya sleeps quietly on the couch. Gaby returns the smile, and she can feel it become a little more real as she sits there, listening to the quiet melody playing from the corner of the room. There is quiet, but it’s that comforting quiet of the living. With the game that they play and everything it brings with it, all of the wreckage that gets left behind in their desperate wakes, that quiet is enough to calm their shattered edges, just for tonight.

Things will look better in the morning, the life of the city chasing away those persistent shades. Things always look better eventually, and even if they don’t, even if it’s not enough, they will dust themselves off and wash the worst of the blood of their hands. After all, they have a job to do.

Even with everything that gets left in their wakes and with everything else they keep dragging with them, the dark days where the world can’t make sense, none of them would have it any other way. Those moments of quiet are a mere fraction of all that makes it worth enduring everything else, and they’ve come too far to give them up now.

_finis_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, thank you so much to every person who has read this story, and especially to the people who comment- it really does mean a lot to me! The Tour de France AU will start to be published at some point in the next week, so I'm not going anywhere.


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